A Multimodal Framework for Computer Mediated Learning: The Reshaping of Curriculum Knowledge and Learning

of page and screen are different: page is portrait and screen is landscape. The visual
impact of page and screen is different. The historical associations are different. How
information is arranged is different. The page is essentially the domain of writing, so
even where image fits onto the page it is fitting into the organisational rules of the
written. The screen is the domain of the visual and is organised according to the
organisational rules of the visual. In addition, pages come in standard sizes within a
limited range, whereas the potential to scroll releases the screen from some of these
limits.

In contrast to the static representation of elements on the page (with the exception of
pop-up books) the screen has the potential to represent elements dynamically.

The screen is impermanent, organic, transient. Its content is electron
and phosphor dot, painted in quantum events, constantly
refreshed...Paper is solid, hard, irreducible. Once applied to that
surface through printing, text is frozen, but until that time it is
dynamic and alive on screen.

(Swigart, 1990: 139)

The page can combine the modes of image and writing, in contrast, the screen can
combine image, moving image, writing, speech, and sound, and other modes. While
the page is usually monochrome the screen has the potential for full colour display. I
argue that the screen offers different modal resources for meaning making than the
page.

As the ink hits the page the meaning and structure of a text is made permanent (an
individual can change the text, she or he can read the text in an order different than
that intended, but they can not change the structure of the text itself). This is not so
with a CDROM or Web page. These media have a permanent structure of links and
webs and connectivity and through their engagement with these the reader produces
and restructures the text. There is no single default reading sequence. Finally, the

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